What does custom software cost?

You pay for decisions, not lines of code

Building is rarely the expensive part. The expensive part is working out what needs to happen: which exceptions live in your process, which system holds the truth when two sources disagree, and what should happen when someone enters something wrong halfway through. A quote that budgets no time for this has moved that work to later, where it is called additional work.

Four dials that actually set the price

• —Number of integrations. Every external system brings its own login, data model, and outages. Two integrations is not twice the work of one.
• —Number of user types. An internal tool for five colleagues you can train is a different thing from a portal where customers work unaided.
• —How bad mistakes are. Software that sends invoices or moves stock needs checks, logs, and recovery paths that an internal dashboard does not.
• —How much of your process is already written down. If nobody can describe how the work runs today, that gets worked out first. Useful work, but it takes time.

Three shapes this is usually agreed in

We work in three models and most agencies do something comparable. A Sprint has defined scope and a fixed price: right when the question is clear, such as an integration between two systems. An MVP runs through to a first version that can genuinely be used: right when you are starting something new and want to know whether it works before building further. A partnership is ongoing development: right once the system runs and has to keep growing with you.

Work out the other side too

The question is not only what it costs, but what you weigh it against. Take the work that disappears and count it in hours per month. Someone spending two days a month retyping invoices costs more per year than most people assume. Add the errors you currently repair and the revenue lost because information arrives late. Sometimes that shows custom software paying for itself within a year. Sometimes it shows a forty-euro-a-month package is plenty. The second answer is just as valuable.

How to judge a quote

• —Does it say what is not included? A quote without boundaries is not a quote.
• —Is time budgeted for working things out, or does the estimate start at building?
• —Who owns the code, and can you leave if you want to?
• —What happens after delivery: who answers when it stops on a Saturday, and what does that cost?
• —Is there something working to look at before the whole budget is spent?

Frequently asked